Wrapping up a case of jars with the book is a functional way to help a friend kickstart a fermenty habit.

This is my go-to basic. Mason jars are so versatile that they’d be a useful and pretty gift even for people who will only ferment one or two things at a time. Wide-mouth quart jars are my pick for most vegetable fermentation, but the details are up to you.

You can buy cases of jars at big box stores, depending on the season and where you live. If you’re buying online, Fillmore Container has a great selection. I especially like their Orchard Road jars for my prettier ferments. They’re made of heavier glass and the lack of ornate designs so the contents of the jar really stand out.

FERMENT YOUR VEGETABLES + PICKLE WEIGHTS

Ceramic or glass food-grade weights are a great ride-along gift for Ferment Your Vegetables.

I have been using pickle weights for a couple years now, ever since I discovered Sandy Der’s handmade version. I don’t use them in every batch, but I like that they allow me to put the lid on my mason jars during fermentation.

Ideally, you could give these as a whole set-up to show a new fermenter what a fermenting jar should look like. Just make sure to tell them to loosen the jar lid!

I also like the glass Pickle Pebbles because I can toss them in the dishwasher after fermentation.

FERMENT YOUR VEGETABLES + LARGE FIDO JAR

I like Fidos for large batches of liquid-y things. This nabak kimchi is a favorite recipe from the book, but beet kvass would make a prettier gift.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the chapter on kvass (I strongly believe that kvass’ time has come!). I like to make kvass, and other veg ferments, in Fido or Le Parfait gasket jars. They’re large and beautiful and I get less Kahm yeast when I ferment in them over regular mason jars. Fill a 4- or 5-liter gasket-sealing jar with a gorgeous pink or red kvass and tie it up with a nice green ribbon for an impressive (and probiotic) slosh under the tree.

A book and a case of jars is an easy and inspiring way to say, “Get going on gut health!” Jars are also useful and practical for just about everyone.

There are quite a few recipes in the book that work quite well as food gifts. I intentionally made some pretty krauts, pickles and kvasses for exactly that purpose. Check out the Mirepoix Kraut for one eye-candy option.

Mother Nature Network did a nice write-up with some great suggestions for how to use Ferment Your Vegetables as gift inspiration (including recipes), so be sure to click over there for lots of suggestions if you’re the DIY gift type. (Protip: There’s booze over there!)

FERMENT YOUR VEGETABLES + CROCK

This crock was handmade by Miki Palchick, a food justice educator and advocate here in Philly. I love it so much.

If you REALLY love a fermenter and have some cash on hand, a ceramic fermenting crock is a generous and exciting gift for any lover of the veg ferments. Better yet, there’s a crock section in Ferment Your Vegetables that can help you buy the right one for your giftee’s needs. (PS – Come back tomorrow for a CROCK GIVEAWAY from Stone Creek Trading!)

FERMENT YOUR VEGETABLES + SOME TYPE OF AIRLOCK DEVICE

FarmCurious lids and airlocks reduce odors on the less pleasant smelling ferments.

Regular readers will know that I don’t rarely use airlocks for vegetable fermentation (no, they aren’t necessary). I do find them handy for reducing odors that occur when fermenting stinkier veg (Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, etc), and some folks, especially people who live in very warm, moist climates, swear by them.

I think the Kraut Source is pretty clever, although it is only available for wide-mouth jars, so keep that in mind.

The ol’ standby of 3-piece airlock and reCAP continues to work well for me (check your local homebrew store. Mine usually stocks both.), with the added bonus that both are good for other uses when properly cleaned. You can also buy those items as a set in the form of the FarmCurious fermenting kit.

If you buy something after you click the Amazon.com link/s in this post, I get a percentage of that purchase, and I do appreciate it! None of the other links in this post are sponsored. I just like the folks that sell the stuff, and I like the stuff they sell.

You may have heard (because I don’t stop talking about it a whole lot) that my book, Ferment Your Vegetables, was published a few weeks back. It is mighty exciting for me to finally hear the feedback from readers and to settle in to this post-writing phase, where I get to share the book that I worked so hard on and, happily, return to my normal schedule of teaching fermentation classes and (yes, they’re back!) regular blog posts sharing my fermenty love.

The Mega Ferment Your Vegetables by Amanda Feifer Giveaway is happening now. Win one of FIVE copies on Phickle.com

I’ll be sharing a couple recipes from the book this week, and a few details about the process. But today is all about the giveaway! My publisher, Fair Winds Press, has generously agreed to give away five copies of Ferment Your Vegetables! The winners will be selected early next week, so you plan some time for making your own kimchi, kvass, kraut, pickles and SO much more during your cozy, indoor holiday time.

I wish you luck and I hope that the spirit of fun, joy, experimentation (and VERY specific recipes including both metric weight and volume measurement to accompany all that) that make me really proud of this book, will make you enjoy reading and fermenting from it!

While I was writing my book, an unexpectedly enjoyable thing happened; I discovered that finding out what I completely and totally hated (fruit in kraut? Pretty much never for me, thanks) was actually fun! I tested many hundreds of recipes to get to the final recipes that are in Ferment Your Vegetables and most of them didn’t make it into the book.

There are a lot of reasons certain recipes didn’t make the cut. Some were too similar to others that were better. Some I knew I needed to test and tweak more and there simply wasn’t time. A very few, falling into a distinguished category, were just truly gross. All of those, I retested several times before giving up, because I thought something must have actually gone wrong in fermentation. As it turned out, nope. They were just epic recipe fails.

Whether or not the final product of fermentation is tasty can be subjective. So maybe you’ve tried something similar to one of the below and loved it (you’ll even find some hedging in what I wrote about these bad guys!). If so, that’s awesome. We probably can’t be friends and I’d like to not eat dinner at your house one day, but still, to each her own. For the rest of you, I thought you might enjoy sharing in the strange pleasure that can only come from a truly spectacular recipe failure.

Here are 5 recipes that never made it to the tasters or recipe testers:

Kale-chi – (Notes on the recipe: “What’s new bitterness, woah-oh-oh-oh-oh?”) I’ve fermented kale before and it’s fine when it ferments with friends, but on its own, it can get crazy bitter. I thought maybe, just maybe, kimchi fixins would temper the bitterness. Then I thought if I found the right number of days to ferment, the bitterness might not be an issue at all. Turns out, nope. The only thing that tasted kinda good was the unfermented version, and Phickle doesn’t not ferment fermentable things. (Come on now).

Turns out, even kimchi-fying kale doesn’t make it a good ferment in my book.

Garlic Scape Pickles – (Notes on the recipe: Jake-“Never serve these to anyone.” Me-“Flavor amazing. Texture, string-like and terrifying.”) I wanted so badly for this to work. Mostly because I had what I thought was a stunning idea for the photo. Yes, yes, mock if you will, but I was really excited about how beautiful these would look wrapped in the jar when a pro photog got her hands on it.

Since the photo was so important to me, I only tested this recipe with whole scapes, which I just learned was at least partially responsible for their horrible texture. Carly and Dave over at Food & Ferments just released a limited edition garlic scape pickle that is off the charts awesome. Their method—smaller pieces, longer fermentation—makes for a killer pickle. So when the next scape season rolls around, make sure to chop first and go long on fermentation and you’ll be a happy, stinky camper. Just goes to show that a little flexibility can go a long way in fermentation.

The reason I have these photos? I wanted the photog to see how they looked beautifully wrapped in the jar. Too bad the texture was the worst and these should never be eaten by anyone. Ever.

Guaca-kraut – (Notes on the recipe: “When the avocado amount is small enough to avoid the rancid smell/flavor, you can no longer really name this anything related to guac.”) Guacamole is my fat of choice. I could honestly, easily eat a bowl of it or a salted avocado every day and still crave more.

I’ve had mixed results incorporating fats into kraut in the past. They tend to go rancid quickly and make for some pretty off smells. I was determined, though, to get the ratio right so that it would work as a thing that could sit in my fridge for a good long while and serve as a tasty, protbiotic guac substitute when I didn’t have the time to whip up a batch. My determination did not pay off. Anything other than the negligible addition of avocado led to gross texture, unpleasant colors and rancid flavors.

Mustard Seed Carrot Kvass – (Notes on the recipe: “Farts. Just farts. Why is this farts?”) If you checked out the table of contents on my book launch day post, you may have noticed that there’s a whole chapter on vegetable kvass. I spent a lot of bandwidth testing kvass recipes. I developed some herb kvasses that I really loved, and I thought, hey, why not a spice kvass? I tried a couple that were okay but needed more tweaking, but I thought a mustard seed kvass (mustard seeds are great additions to krauts and pickles!) with a little carrot would work out wonderfully. I was wrong. It wasn’t wonderful. It was traumatic.

Sometimes when the smell is off in a veg ferment, it may just need a couple more days of fermentation, or maybe a little time in the fridge before it’s ready. Sometimes the smell isn’t great (I’m looking at you, pickled Brussels sprouts), but the taste is. In this case, the smell and the taste were both horrifically farty. I regret all four sips I took before this went down the drain.

I love mustard in SO many ferments. Mustard seed kvass was a big party pooper, however.

Piña Colada Kraut – (Notes on the recipe: “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) I saved the worst for last. In the sauerkraut chapter of my book, there are several recipes that I affectionately, and privately refer to as my “weirdo krauts.” If you’ve got the book, these include favorites like Sauerkraut Satay (page 90) and Mediterranean Kraut (page 87). The weirdo krauts in general are some of my very favorite recipes in the book, and tasters and testers have strongly agreed with me, so it’s not like I regret the experiments. Some of these attempts, however, were nearly as successful as a Trump combover.

The worst of the lot was the Piña Colada Kraut. Every bite—every thing—was wrong with this kraut. I tried with a lot of different kinds of coconut (fresh, dried, shredded, sweetened, unsweetened, milk, water, etc) and the results either tasted not at all like coconut, had a really not good (slimy) texture or had a super oxidized, unpleasant flavor. The pineapple experiments were worse: dried, candied, fresh; it didn’t matter. All efforts produced a sulfuric, nose-destroying funk that brought tears to my eyes. This was definitely the worst fermentation experiment I’ve ever done, and that’s coming from the person who has grown some pretty impressive moldscapes in recent times.

The absolute worst vegetable ferment I’ve ever made is Piña Colada Kraut. There isn’t enough “nope” in the world for this one.

I promise, I’m not telling you not to try this at home. Although these were some of the worst things I’ve ever tasted, I don’t regret my efforts for a minute. The spirit of fermentation (and the spirit of my book) is about finding what works for you, and quite literally, playing with your food. Sometimes spectacular failure is the most fun you can have in the kitchen.

If you pre-ordered my book, Ferment Your Vegetables, right about now you’ll be seeing your copy on the doorstep. I couldn’t be more excited about that. I’m aflutter with butterflies, overwhelmed with excitement and ready to get it out there and show you what it’s got!

I’m not going to lie: making this book was big work. I spent a long time and a lot of thought working to make a book that would be helpful and inspiring to you. I wanted this book to fully explore every kind of vegetable fermentation I know and love. I wanted to build a guide that would inspire you (experienced fermenters) to explore areas you haven’t explored, but also one that was completely approachable and easy for you (folks who haven’t yet dived into vats of sour bubbly things) to use with total comfort.

So here’s some fun stuff in there that I think you’ll like:

Focus on technique – While recipes are important (and I really hope you love mine; I worked hard to make them awesome), you really don’t need me to tell you how to pickle every vegetable under the sun. I wanted readers to develop a deep understanding of how and why fermentation works, so that they (you) could feel free to experiment within the few “rules” of vegetable fermentation.

Photos – Just OMG, you guys. Courtney Apple did the photos and Barbara Botting did the styling, and I just want to brag on them all the time. I was on set for the entire shoot, and I truly believe that these two pros made the most beautiful possible photos that have ever been taken of fermented vegetables. That’s not hyperbole. I have never seen anything like these pics! They are stunners that make me feel really proud of the recipes I created.

Simplicity – Although there’s a whole section with some less common fermentation styles (nuka, Indian-style sun pickles, etc), Part Two of the book is dedicated to showing how simple vegetable fermentation can be. I truly believe that vegetable fermentation is a basic and essential cooking skill and I hope this book helps everyone to feel that way.

Fun –I love fermentation, not in small part because I have loads of fun with it. I want you to have fun with it too, and my goal was to infuse that spirit into the book.

Tradition + New Ideas – Looking for basic sauerkraut? We got you! Straight up, spicy kimchi? Plenty of it. Classic dill pickles? They’re here! BUT, I wanted to share my crazier favorites, too, so new and experienced fermenters alike could see that it’s fun and easy to move beyond mustard seeds and cabbage, into ingredients and flavors you may not have considered. Some of my favorite recipes in the book are the most unexpected ones. Don’t miss the Sauerkraut Satay, Carrot Cake Kraut, Celery Kvass or Pumpkin Spice Kimchi.

Whether you pre-ordered Ferment Your Vegetables long, long ago, or you’re just getting around to ordering, there’s time to get a signed copy! The first 100 people by Monday, 10/26 at 12pm EST to email me proof of purchase with the subject “Bookplate, Please!” will receive a personally inscribed book plate to place inside the book.

It’s a super cute sticker that I’ll make out to you (or the name of your choice) and send to you in the mail.

You can buy Ferment Your Vegetables in your local bookstores and online in all the normal spots.

If you see an Amazon link here, it may be an affiliate link. That means I get a small percentage back from purchases you make after you click. Your price remains unchanged, and I do appreciate it! It gives me a little extra wiggle room for recipe testing and other fun fermenty things.

All photos in this post were taken by Courtney Apple and styled by Barbara Botting. They are the property of Quarto Publishing.